One of the first objections raised about house churches is the question of accountability. "If it is not 'under authority', a house church is in danger of falling into heresy and false doctrine."

What about heresy?       11/2000

Dear Church,

One of the first objections raised about house churches is the question of accountability. "If it is not 'under authority', a house church is in danger of falling into heresy and false doctrine."

My first response to this objection is, "So, how successful has the 'institutional church' (where people are supposedly 'under authority') been at maintaining pure doctrine?" (I was ordained in what was then the United Presbyterian Church in 1973. Massive amounts of time were spent debating various issues in the creeds and confessions and The Book of Order. I'm not impressed with the outcome.)

My second response is "Maybe there's a better way to maintain pure doctrine. A friend recently had a conversation with Jim Petersen, the author of The Church Without Walls. He said that Jim's basic conclusion is that the early church leaders made decisions based on the problems that confronted the church at the time. "One of their decisions was to move toward more hierarchy as a means of safeguarding doctrine, which did solve the problem of doctrine but created another problem: a less Spirited church life. If the church leadership had decided to not go the control route, the false doctrine would have shriveled up like a dead grape vine, and the true doctrine would have become even more strong. Peterson sees the decision to move toward control and hierarchy as a human solution to safeguard the Apostolic truth entrusted to them rather than a spiritual solution."

This reminded me of what Wolfgang Simson said in Houses that Change the World (p. 40). "Early on, the Church started to give in to the pressure for security. Around the year 150, for example, "Scholastic Theology" was introduced, as a system to interpret the scriptures and defend it against heresies like the Gnosis. Very soon the defensive system became more important than the message it defended....In order to defend the truth and the Church against (false teaching), the Church strongly focused on dogma and creed, and tightly observed who was able and allowed to do ministry, and who not. In short, it tried to exert greater control, in order to avoid more damage. The motivation was good, but the method was not. Control is the natural development of a lack of trust, of fear, the opposite of faith, and leads people to build a system in order to make sure that nothing can go wrong, or at least to minimize danger and apostasy. As a result, the church focuses more on "safe" rituals, "right" formulas and "approved" liturgies and tries to become watertight as well as fool proof. What developed as a byproduct of this was, that the Church quickly fell into the hands of enthusiastic theological watchdogs, policemen of the faith and a new version of "bishops", king-like figures who where not any more the most humble servants and plain down-to earth elders, but impressive figureheads and religious prime ministers with an aura of awe-inspiring authority in order to keep the flock together and the problems outside. Again, a human Saul replaced God as the real king of the people of God."

Isn't this what Jesus teaches us in the parable in Mt. 13:24-30? Weeds (false doctrine?) were growing up among the wheat. The servants asked the owner, "Do you want us to go and pull them up?" The owner responded, "No, because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. I'll have the harvesters deal with the weeds later." (Also, see Gamaliel's wise comments in Acts 5:38-39)

Sometimes the solutions we come up with are worse than the problems. Are we (whether in institutional church or house church) willing to give up our need to control things? Are we willing to seek the Lord's methods for keeping our doctrine pure?


John